


Caving In

by ParadifeLoft



Series: Not Your Hero [2]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Canon Divergence, Gen, Injury, Mental Health Issues, Nonbinary Character, Other characters with bit-parts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 02:34:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7416178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadifeLoft/pseuds/ParadifeLoft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leeha Narezz is not the only one waiting on the Emperor's orders aboard the <em>Korriban's Flame</em>, nor is she the only one with intentions of springing a trap. A reimagining of the Jedi Knight's inter-Belsavis/Voss and the Sith Warrior's inter-Voss/Corellia missions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Caving In

When the hum and clash of lightsabers filled her ears, Rivka didn’t expect the high, repeated zapping sound of blasterfire to join in. But that was what she heard - saw, too, as Force-nudged she’d turned to look in the direction of the shots before they were even fired.

Saw Scourge’s pointed brows raising, body halting in mid-swing as the target of his intended blow disappeared from its anticipated location.

Saw the Sith he dueled with, the echo of his own betrayal falling, crumpling, convulsing to the floor. Their bloody-painted mouth open in a small _oh_ \- not even pain yet, or anger, or fear, just a frantic beat of their heart pounding like Rivka’s own in her ears, piercing a sudden shocked stillness in the Force.

Rivka wasn’t sure it _wasn’t_ her own heart.

Her eyes flicked across the scene, as though she were too scared of more pain, more death, to focus on the figure on the floor - _the Wrath_ , someone who seemed so… _new_ , compared to what Scourge had described about his position when she’d asked -

\- her gaze fell to the Imperial officer who’d stood guard over the door hatch this new Emperor's Wrath had entered from.

The officer's presentation was still impeccable, but for the disgusted scowl that had appeared on his face, and the tendrils of smoke snaking from his outstretched blaster.

“Wow, you could be just about an honorary Sith with that kind of cold betrayal,” Kira’s voice rang out, breaking the sudden silence with a snide anger. Disgust. Anything about the Sith was still personal for her.

Though the words were Kira's, the soldier’s stare didn’t deviate from his target - victim - when he responded. “There is no betrayal in serving my true master. Nor is there betrayal in serving the good of the Empire over the whims of a treasonous rogue Sith.”

A pained whimper sounded from beside where Rivka had crouched, and she looked back, and _Leeha_ , Leeha - her entire face in terror and panic, and through the Force a bursting impression of _no no don’t kill, you can’t you don’t know, vhe serves_ \- and the focus of her attention twitching wildly from the officer, to _Scourge_ -

The Sith on the floor had somehow managed propping themself up with arms and hips, legs still splayed out in an awkward unpleasant tangle to the side. Their chest was a nearly-flat surface of shallow heaving movement, breath a hairsbreadth from the tip of Scourge’s lightsaber.

“I have few pleasures in this life, but I do think killing you and depriving my former master of his hasty, ill-thought replacement shall be one of them,” Scourge uttered softly, gazing down the length of his blade. Matching where Rivka could only assume the younger Sith’s eyes would be if not covered by their mask.

The Force was still, but everything inside of Rivka was suddenly too much. She trembled with the tension in her limbs, her hands shook, _fingers_ shook. “No,” she heard herself say. Couldn’t live in her own head right now, she needed - distance, just let something else animate her body and mouth now, until they could get _away_ -

“No. No more killing. We’ve got what we came for.”

What had they come for? She couldn’t remember right now. Objective somewhere in her head, but she’d temporarily changed the password and couldn’t access… not important now. Bending over, she took Leeha’s arm around her shoulder, grasped her waist as they stood together. She decidedly didn’t look at Jomar - shouldn’t just leave a body, not a fellow Jedi, fellow Zabrak, he deserved a proper return to the earth, but she couldn’t -

“We got what we came for,” Rivka repeated. “We’re leaving.”

The way Scourge looked at her said enough, but he let his blade vanish nonetheless. Kira was still watching the Imperial officer, as though wondering if he might turn his blaster on them all next. But no, not right now; his focus for the moment was for the Sith he'd shot. The Sith she'd refused to let Scourge kill.

This space station wasn’t large, but it would still take far too long for Rivka's liking for them to return to their ship.

The way back to the airlock was half traversed when they heard a body slamming against the station walls, a shot fired, a strangled yell. Nobody turned to look back.

 

* * * * * * * * *

 

The ship’s door hissing open was a small noise compared to the racket that followed in its wake.

“Vette. Vette! Stop what you’re doing and get me a kolto pack. Immediately!”

As soon as the airlock door shut, Meshurat let zerself lean against the ship, sharp gasps coming with each staggered step, half dragging each leg behind zerself in turn as vhe tried to walk. Finally, barely a meter inside, vhe gave it up and sagged fully against the wall. The durasteel crashed and rang through the ship as vhe slammed zer fist into it several times, cold fury of zer rage building a dark side maelstrom in the atmosphere.

_“Vette!”_

“I’m here, I’m here ok, what happened -”

Her casual tone was belied obviously by her pinpoint pupils and stiff-straight lekku, and the “ _fuck_ ” she all but whispered when she got a look at the scene. Tearing the tab off the kolto package, she ran a quick visual triage of Meshurat’s posture, shaking the pack with one hand and undoing the clasps of Meshurat’s ruined armor with the other.

“Fuck kolto _pack_ , we need to get you in the damn _tank_ yesterday!” she said, rucking up the Sith’s undershirt to expose zer back and slapping the porous side of the package against the charred, bloody mess of skin and muscle there. “What the hell _happened_?!”

Quinn stood pale at the opposite wall of the ship entrance, gloved hands clenched at his sides.

“Bloody - Jedi -” Meshurat spat out between rasping inhalations. “Get in the - tank - when I can - walk -”

Vette laughed a bit hysterically, painful tears springing to her eyes. “Where’s another damn Sith when you could use one?” she quipped. Because she wasn’t a doctor, and zer wounds were so close to the spine, and Pierce had gone ahead to Corellia for his stupid Bastion, and nobody else was big enough to pick Meshurat up without _levitating_ zer…

Jaesa was going to be back within a couple hours. It would be enough. It _had_ to be.

 

* * * * * * * * *

 

The ship had far too many stairs for Rivka to enjoy hauling a person up. Leeha had fought hard enough - fought _Kira_ hard enough, because Rivka had _frozen_ , hand clasped around her lightsaber but incapable of drawing it - that it was finally the pain of a twisted ankle, a singed pair of head-tresses, who knew what else, that finally disrupted her connection to the Emperor. That combined with the trauma and disorientation of coming back to _yourself_ after drowning under that incessant will for so long... Rivka could feel intimately her difficulties in moving.

Difficulties in _existing_.

Once up the stairs, Rivka nearly cried in relief to help Leeha down onto one of the couches in the main room of the ship. Though that only left her to realise the others would be looking to her for directions about what to do now, and the thought of facing any of them much less forming _words_ and _sentences_ stoppered up her mouth just as fear had glued her hand to her unlit saber.

Behind her, the sound of metal wheels drew up closer, followed by a series of beeps. _"Jedi_mission = finished? Jedi_Kira = take us off Sith station?"_

Rivka could feel Kira's eyes on her before she turned. "Yeah, sure thing," she replied. Her wary but trying to sound calm and collected voice. WIth one more look back, she went to head up to the nav controls. What a relief T7 could be sometimes.

Once the others had cleared out, with a long, worried trilling sound, the droid rolled up closer to them, tilting its head. _"Jedi = Found Jedi_Narezz on Sith ship? Jedi_Narezz = going to be alright? T7 = liked Jedi_Narezz."_

But even him, she couldn't quite look at straight on. "I don't know, Teeseven," she murmured. "I hope so."

For the moment, Leeha had drawn herself inward, curled up and leaning against the couch, expression unreadable, distant. Too full of too many things, all jostling for power and attention until it was so overwhelming all you could focus on was the most trivial of details, or else implode. Or at least, so she could guess... with a quick twist of her head down and away, Rivka squeezed her eyes shut tight for a moment. That line of thought was nowhere she wanted to go. Now least of all.

And would Leeha even remain free of the Emperor's control, now? It was another question she didn't want to think about, but the potential consequences of the answer gave it a bit more staying power against being forced away. Rivka herself wasn't _under his control_ any more; and Kira, if it was the same for Kira, had as far as either of them knew severed the link completely; but neither of them, nor even Scourge for that matter, had much insight into the full extent of such things.

What a mess she'd made without even thinking. She'd been too late for the meeting, too late to save Jomar; they had no information on the Emperor's next plans; and she'd left his newest servant, his self-proclaimed Wrath, to either die at someone else's hands or survive and continue to do his will once more. The latter, if her hunch was correct.

And looking at Leeha, it seemed even there she was inept. Nothing she knew how to say or do; touch almost certainly unwelcome, words inadequate.

A slight bumping brush against her leg startled her just enough out of those thoughts. T7, trying and succeeding to get her attention - he gave a pair of short beeps - and when she glanced down, she saw he must have left for a moment, because behind him he held one of the blankets from the bed in her quarters. He beeped again in offering.

Rivka couldn't really manage a smile, not now, but she could project warmth in the Force, and if any droid could feel that, or at least perceive some subtle resultant change in her manner as a result, it would be T7. She bent down and took the blanket from him, and gently draped it about Leeha.

Everything was counting on her. This couldn't be the place where it all just stopped and fell apart. It couldn't be.


End file.
